gastronomy

I can't resist a good anthology. Honestly, I can't resist any anthology on food or travel, but so many are disappointing. A Slice of Life does not disappoint.

A Slice of Life is subtitled "Contemporary Writers on Food" and the essays range in time from the early 1950s to 2003, with the majority from the 1990s. Note also the emphasis on "writers." With a few exceptions, these pieces are written by people who make their living writing, not by cooking or eating. Therefore, the standard is high, and the result is impressive. Russell Baker, Umberto Eco, Calvin Trillin, Isabel Allende, and Jane Kramer are among the fine essayists whose work is represented here. However, even the exceptions, such as Julia Child's memory of her first TV shows, are superb.

I enjoyed revisiting favorite authors: Anthony Bourdain, Adam Gopnik, Jeffrey Steingarten, Sallie Tisdale. And I always hope to discover writers I've never read. Now that I know about Nigel Slater and Jay Parini, I will be looking for more of their work. This is what I love about anthologies.

This impressive collection features meditations on life and food from writers as diverse as M.F.K Fisher, Russell Baker, Isabel Allende, Maxine Kumin, Ntozake Shange and lots more stars of the literary and culinary firmament.

There are some breathtakingly poignant pieces, chief among them Cara de Silva's story of the cookbook compiled in a concentration camp, which made its way across a quarter century and through numerous hands to reach its author's daughter. Or Chitrita Banerjee's essay following her mother's Bengali widowhood, a cultural sentence of privation.

Some are actually about food itself - Elizabeth David's piece on herbs, Nigella Lawson's sensual celebration of cooking, Corby Kummer's sojourn at a coffee plantation, New Hampshire poet Charles Simic's ambivalence about the bio-engineered tomato - but most are about life's associations with food.

Jay Parini began a career of writing in restaurants in the hubbub of Lou's diner in Hanover, NH. Putting together a New Year's feast for her young daughter inspires a tirade of cultural memory in Ntozake Shange. Historian Rachel Laudan dispatches the nostalgia for "slow food" with a healthy dash of historical reality. Roland Barthes meditates on chopsticks and Umberto Eco muses on the psychology of airplane food.

Editor Marranca has chosen, above all, writers. Wide ranging in subject, mood and style, these pieces all share a commonality of quality. A repast to sample and savor.